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This is a great observation. The list is bewildering to me as well. I think the author is trying to play up this strawman of conservative authoritarianism and p

This is a great observation. The list is bewildering to me as well. I think the author is trying to play up this strawman of conservative authoritarianism and perhaps reflects her upbringing but I don't think its typical of the American educational experience. "The best and brightest follow the rules" bothers me the most. From a young age I've been taught by the establishment that inventors and industrialists who purposely broke away from the norm became successful. I think the US encourages this kind of thinking. "There is a very clear, single path to success" is also unforgivable. Maybe the dangerous lesson here is beware thumbnails of cute authors and easily to digest comic strips that reflect your own biases.

loganfrederick 15y ago
There is the danger that your own upbringing is also used as anecdotal evidence. From my experience in what I'd guess is a stereotypical suburban American public school, going against the norm is not widely supported. It's not so much that it's frowned upon, but more that it's outside "the system" and administrators don't know how to manage people/students trying to break away from the norm, which is their job. This leads to situations where a student trying to do his/her own thing can't because our society and school systems are filled with red tape that slows down, not enhances, free-thinking. I do agree that the article is mostly fluff though.
jerf 15y ago
They are not talking about teachers standing up in front of you and saying literally, "I have all the answers. Shut and become good factory workers." They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority... while you are sitting in seats in front of them, not making noise, taking tests when told on what told, coming in and leaving on a schedule... and probably even the teachers telling you to question authority won't, say, actually let you walk out of the classroom and play basketball, no matter how much they feebly protest that you should question authority. (And if they did, they wouldn't be teaching for long. The system would not permit it.) Yeah. You had a couple of people mouth some words about nonconformity, while spending hours every day inextricably enmeshed so deeply in a system built around conformity that you apparently can't even see the conformity, if you think that a few people mouthing words without actions was enough to counteract it. The teachers said some words while you were embodied in a contrary system. Mind you, all that conformity isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like civilization. But I think it is still important to see it, and choose it when you want it, and be aware of what is going on so others can't use it against you, attacking you on a level you can't even perceive. Also, this article is tripe. I shouldn't have had to elaborate on it in this manner when it should have said it. And those are clearly something more like 5 points than 9; numbered lists strike again.
- planetguy 15y ago
  They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority People don't need to be taught to question authority, they figure it out on their own at a pretty young age. Usually the moment an authority tells them to do something that they don't want to do. At the age of two, "questioning authority" manifests itself by throwing a tantrum in the supermarket when the authority tells you to stop trying to grab things off the shelves. At the age of fifteen, "questioning authority" has moved on to the more direct form in which you assert that your parents and teachers are idiots who don't know anything and that you should be allowed to smoke, skip school and pierce your septum if you feel like it. The process of growing up is largely a matter of getting out of this phase and accepting that actually those authority figures were right about some things all along. "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years" -- Mark Twain (maybe, though snopes says falsely attributed) Everybody on Earth fancies themselves anti-authoritarian; it's easy to be anti-authoritarian when an authority is telling you to do something you don't want to do, though much harder when the authority is telling other people to do things that you really think they ought to.
  - Goronmon 15y ago
    I feel like you are twisting the meaning of the phrase "questioning authority" into basically pure "rebelling against authority" as I would say they are two separate ideas. The notion of "questioning authority" I would argue is similar to your statement of accepting that authority figures are right about some things, as in, they are most likely not right about all things and that it is important to spend time figuring out which is which. I'm not sure where that is similar at all to the idea of a child throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.

loganfrederick 15y ago

There is the danger that your own upbringing is also used as anecdotal evidence. From my experience in what I'd guess is a stereotypical suburban American public school, going against the norm is not widely supported. It's not so much that it's frowned upon, but more that it's outside "the system" and administrators don't know how to manage people/students trying to break away from the norm, which is their job. This leads to situations where a student trying to do his/her own thing can't because our society and school systems are filled with red tape that slows down, not enhances, free-thinking. I do agree that the article is mostly fluff though.

jerf 15y ago

They are not talking about teachers standing up in front of you and saying literally, "I have all the answers. Shut and become good factory workers." They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority... while you are sitting in seats in front of them, not making noise, taking tests when told on what told, coming in and leaving on a schedule... and probably even the teachers telling you to question authority won't, say, actually let you walk out of the classroom and play basketball, no matter how much they feebly protest that you should question authority. (And if they did, they wouldn't be teaching for long. The system would not permit it.) Yeah. You had a couple of people mouth some words about nonconformity, while spending hours every day inextricably enmeshed so deeply in a system built around conformity that you apparently can't even see the conformity, if you think that a few people mouthing words without actions was enough to counteract it. The teachers said some words while you were embodied in a contrary system. Mind you, all that conformity isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like civilization. But I think it is still important to see it, and choose it when you want it, and be aware of what is going on so others can't use it against you, attacking you on a level you can't even perceive. Also, this article is tripe. I shouldn't have had to elaborate on it in this manner when it should have said it. And those are clearly something more like 5 points than 9; numbered lists strike again.

planetguy 15y ago
They are talking about the fact that you have a few teachers telling you to question authority People don't need to be taught to question authority, they figure it out on their own at a pretty young age. Usually the moment an authority tells them to do something that they don't want to do. At the age of two, "questioning authority" manifests itself by throwing a tantrum in the supermarket when the authority tells you to stop trying to grab things off the shelves. At the age of fifteen, "questioning authority" has moved on to the more direct form in which you assert that your parents and teachers are idiots who don't know anything and that you should be allowed to smoke, skip school and pierce your septum if you feel like it. The process of growing up is largely a matter of getting out of this phase and accepting that actually those authority figures were right about some things all along. "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years" -- Mark Twain (maybe, though snopes says falsely attributed) Everybody on Earth fancies themselves anti-authoritarian; it's easy to be anti-authoritarian when an authority is telling you to do something you don't want to do, though much harder when the authority is telling other people to do things that you really think they ought to.
- Goronmon 15y ago
  I feel like you are twisting the meaning of the phrase "questioning authority" into basically pure "rebelling against authority" as I would say they are two separate ideas. The notion of "questioning authority" I would argue is similar to your statement of accepting that authority figures are right about some things, as in, they are most likely not right about all things and that it is important to spend time figuring out which is which. I'm not sure where that is similar at all to the idea of a child throwing a tantrum in a supermarket.